Sunday, May 11, 2014

Clockwork Century

Looking for some good steampunk stories? One of my favorite series is the Clockwork Century books by Cherie Priest. Check them out!

Boneshaker

In the early days of the
Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of
newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian
prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great
machine that could mine through Alaska’s ice. Thus was Dr. Blue’s
Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.But on its
first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several
blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight
gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.Now
it is sixteen years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the
devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue’s widow, Briar
Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to
support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a
secret crusade to rewrite history.His quest will take
him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air
pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar
can bring him out alive.

Dreadnought

Nurse Mercy Lynch is
elbows deep in bloody laundry at a war hospital in Richmond, Virginia,
when Clara Barton comes bearing bad news: Mercy’s husband has died in a
POW camp. On top of that, a telegram from the west coast declares that
her estranged father is gravely injured, and he wishes to see her. Mercy
sets out toward the Mississippi River. Once there, she’ll catch a train
over the Rockies and—if the telegram can be believed—be greeted in
Washington Territory by the sheriff, who will take her to see her father
in Seattle.Reaching the Mississippi is a harrowing adventure by
dirigible and rail through war-torn border states. When Mercy finally
arrives in St. Louis, the only Tacoma-bound train is pulled by a
terrifying Union-operated steam engine called the Dreadnought. Reluctantly, Mercy buys a ticket and climbs aboard.What
ought to be a quiet trip turns deadly when the train is beset by
bushwhackers, then vigorously attacked by a band of Rebel soldiers. The
train is moving away from battle lines into the vast, unincorporated
west, so Mercy can’t imagine why they’re so interested. Perhaps the
mysterious cargo secreted in the second and last train cars has
something to do with it?Mercy is just a frustrated nurse who
wants to see her father before he dies. But she’ll have to survive both
Union intrigue and Confederate opposition if she wants to make it off
the Dreadnought alive.

Ganymede

The air pirate Andan Cly is going straight. Well, straighter.
Although he’s happy to run alcohol guns wherever the money’s good, he
doesn’t think the world needs more sap, or its increasingly ugly
side-effects. But becoming legit is easier said than done, and Cly’s
first legal gig—a supply run for the Seattle Underground—will be paid
for by sap money.New Orleans is not Cly’s first pick for a
shopping run. He loved the Big Easy once, back when he also loved a
beautiful mixed-race prostitute named Josephine Early—but that was a
decade ago, and he hasn’t looked back since. Jo’s still thinking about
him, though, or so he learns when he gets a telegram about a peculiar
piloting job. It’s a chance to complete two lucrative jobs at once, one
he can’t refuse. He sends his old paramour a note and heads for New
Orleans, with no idea of what he’s in for—or what she wants him to fly.

But
he won’t be flying. Not exactly. Hidden at the bottom of Lake
Pontchartrain lurks an astonishing war machine, an immense submersible
called the Ganymede. This prototype could end the war, if only
anyone had the faintest idea of how to operate it…. If only they could
sneak it past the Southern forces at the mouth of the Mississippi River…
If only it hadn’t killed most of the men who’d ever set foot inside it.

But it’s those “if onlys” that will decide whether Cly and his
crew will end up in the history books, or at the bottom of the ocean.

The Inexplicables

Rector “Wreck ’em”
Sherman was orphaned as a toddler in the Blight of 1863, but that was
years ago. Wreck has grown up, and on his eighteenth birthday, he’ll be
cast out out of the orphanage.

And Wreck’s problems aren’t merely
about finding a home. He’s been quietly breaking the cardinal rule of
any good drug dealer and dipping into his own supply of the sap he
sells. He’s also pretty sure he’s being haunted by the ghost of a kid he
used to know—Zeke Wilkes, who almost certainly died six months ago.
Zeke would have every reason to pester Wreck, since Wreck got him inside
the walled city of Seattle in the first place, and that was probably
what killed him. Maybe it’s only a guilty conscience, but Wreck can’t
take it anymore, so he sneaks over the wall.

The walled-off
wasteland of Seattle is every bit as bad as he’d heard, chock-full of
the hungry undead and utterly choked by the poisonous, inescapable
yellow gas. And then there's the monster. Rector's pretty certain that
whatever attacked him was not at all human—and not a rotter, either.
Arms far too long. Posture all strange. Eyes all wild and faintly
glowing gold and known to the locals as simply “The Inexplicables.”

In
the process of tracking down these creatures, Rector comes across
another incursion through the wall -- just as bizarre but entirely
attributable to human greed. It seems some outsiders have decided
there’s gold to be found in the city and they’re willing to do whatever
it takes to get a piece of the pie unless Rector and his posse have
anything to do with it.

Fiddlehead

Ex-spy ‘Belle Boyd’ is
retired – more or less. Retired from spying on the Confederacy anyway.
Her short-lived marriage to a Union navy boy cast suspicion on those
Southern loyalties, so her mid-forties found her unemployed, widowed and
disgraced. Until her life-changing job offer from the staunchly Union
Pinkerton Detective Agency.

When she’s required to assist Abraham
Lincoln himself, she has to put any old loyalties firmly aside – for a
man she spied against twenty years ago.Lincoln’s friend Gideon Bardsley,
colleague and ex-slave, is targeted for assassination after the young
inventor made a breakthrough. Fiddlehead, Bardsley’s calculating engine,
has proved an extraordinary threat threatens the civilized world.
Meaning now is not the time for conflict.

Now Bardsley and
Fiddlehead are in great danger as forces conspire to keep this secret,
the war moving and the money flowing. With spies from both camps gunning
for her, can even the notorious Belle Boyd hold the war-hawks at bay?

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